Since 2006 , federally declared weather-related disasters in the United States have affected counties housing 242 million people--or roughly four out of five Americans. That's the remarkable finding of Environment America, who last week released a detailed report on extreme weather events in the U.S. The report analyzed FEMA data to study the number of federally declared weather-related disasters. More than 15 million Americans live in counties that have averaged one or more weather-related disasters per year since the beginning of 2006. Ten U.S. counties--six in Oklahoma, two in Nebraska, and one each in Missouri and South Dakota--have each experienced ten or more declared weather-related disasters since 2006. South Carolina was the only state without a weather-related disaster since 2006. The report did a nice job explaining the linkages between extreme weather events and climate change, and concluded, "The increasing evidence linking global warming to certain types of extreme weather events--underscored by the degree to which those events are already both a common and an extremely disruptive fact of life in the United States--suggests that the nation should take the steps needed now to prevent the worst impacts of global warming and to prepare for the changes that are inevitably coming down the road."

Figure 1. County-level map of federally-declared weather-related disasters between 2006 - 2011. Tornadoes and severe thunderstorms in the Midwest, and heavy rains and snows from Nor'easters, hurricanes, and other storms in the Northeast gave those two regions the most disaster declarations. An interactive version of this map that allows one to click and see the individual disasters by county is on the Environment America website.

no one knows nor will ever know...get over it..move on..this is a weather blog!

I can't get over, because even that is an incorrect claim.

It's just everyone who claims to know is immediately labeled a lunatic or unreliable witness and dismissed, because it doesn't fit the "scientific method".

And for example, let's list some possibilities.

If God exists (for the sake of argument atheists), then you are wrong, eventually everyone will know, and will be too late for many, and everyone has much to gain or lose by believing or disbelieving in God and trying to find out every truth they can about Him.

If God does not exist, I still have nothing to gain by disbelieving in God, since atheism offers me absolutely nothing rational except nihilism, and if everything is meaningless, there's no reason to care one way or another.

It's just everyone who claims to know is immediately labeled a lunatic or unreliable witness and dismissed, because it doesn't fit the "scientific method".

And for example, let's list some possibilities.

If God exists (for the sake of argument atheists), then you are wrong, eventually everyone will know, and will be too late for many, and everyone has much to gain or lose by believing or disbelieving in God and trying to find out every truth they can about Him.

If God does not exist, I still have nothing to gain by disbelieving in God, since atheism offers me absolutely nothing rational except nihilism.

ok, but what does that have to do with this weather blog? thats what you need to get over!

totally agree, it was stupid to build a city there in the first place..for sure mans fault..it was stupid to rebuild it..it will happen again!

The land where New Orleans was originally founded (near and along the river) is and continues to be above sea level. The economic and lifestyle decisions to expand out into below-sea-level territory created the problems NOLA now contends with.

The land where New Orleans was originally founded (near and along the river) is and continues to be above sea level. The economic and lifestyle decisions to expand out into below-sea-level territory created the problems NOLA now contends with.

yesh i know the french quater and the nicer parts of town are above sea level, the parts that were flooded will continue to flood, by hurricanes or plain heavy rains every few decades, so just let it go and stop wasting money on a lost cause

totally agree, it was stupid to build a city there in the first place..for sure mans fault..it was stupid to rebuild it..it will happen again!

New Orleans is a major seaport and a vital gateway up the Mississippi River. The economical benefits it brings outweighs its having to be rebuilt from time to time. Without New Orleans, there would have to be another seaport built to replace it and be nearly as prone to the acts of nature. When you service world wide shipping and the interior states via the Mississippi River, then you will have a place. Maybe not the best place, from a weather related standpoint, but an economic place for certain.

ok, but what does that have to do with this weather blog? thats what you need to get over!

This weather blog is filled with "God vs atheism" stuff all the time.

I didn't start it this time, and I didn't start last time either.

Hang around enough science or weather blogs and forums, or almost any blog for that matter, and you'll find spiritual or metaphysical matters inevitably comes up, because somehow some way someone brings up pseudosciences such as the Big Bang and other similar stuff.

Everything is related to everything, else science would be meaningless.

Quoting EllenPettit:That's how cities generally are created. If you go by your line of thinking, NY only consists of Manhattan. Hell, forget about the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queen, and Long Island. That's not part of New York!!

yeah and all of new york including its 5 burs are all well above sea level

New Orleans is a major seaport and a vital gateway up the Mississippi River. The economical benefits it brings outweighs its having to be rebuilt from time to time. Without New Orleans, there would have to be another seaport built to replace it and be nearly as prone to the acts of nature. When you service world wide shipping and the interior states via the Mississippi River, then you will have a place. Maybe not the best place, from a weather related standpoint, but an economic place for certain.

Hang around enough science or weather blogs and forums, or almost any blog for that matter, and you'll find spiritual or metaphysical matters inevitably comes up, because somehow some way someone brings up pseudosciences such as the Big Bang and other similar stuff.

Everything is related to everything, else science would be meaningless.

yesh i know the french quater and the nicer parts of town are above sea level, the parts that were flooded will continue to flood, by hurricanes or plain heavy rains every few decades, so just let it go and stop wasting money on a lost cause

Sorry but I can't take seriously anyone who advocates the abandonment of a major US city because it's prone to disaster every few decades. Especially when Amsterdam, London, and numerous other cities in much less wealthy countries around the world have been able to address this problem effectively.

I think we might have found someone smarter than Xyrus2000, Belle, Neapolitan, and atmoaggie.

The winner is: RTS player.

Way to go, player. This guy knows his stuff. Step aside Xyrus2000, Belle, Neapolitan, and atmoaggie.

I must add you are getting a bit annoying here. What ever happened to starting a clean slate here. Please, dude. MOVE ON!!

No he doesn't. He has no background in cosmology nor has any deep understanding of the mechanics of the universe. Every objection he makes to the current expansionary model of the universe has been refuted in the literature on the subject. He has misapplied several logical constructs, and when presented with such facts/evidence/research that contradicts his statements, he falls back to religion as a defense. Once someone bring religion into a scientific discussion, the discussion becomes completely useless and a waste of time. This is basically why I don't bother discussing such topics with him, or any member who falls back on the religion as a logical defense in scientific argument. There's no salient method for disproving someone who bases their arguments on faith. There is no logical counterpoint to "God did it!".

Sorry but I can't take seriously anyone who advocates the abandonment of a major US city because it's prone to disaster every few decades. Especially when Amsterdam, London, and numerous other cities in much less wealthy countries around the world have been able to address this problem effectively.

yes i know they get major storms up there but they dont get approaced often by cat 5 hurricanes, and they are protected by dikes that make ours look like retention pond dams! not even comparable!

If you are going to be specific...4 out of 5 Americans live in counties that had a Federally Declared Weather-Related Disasters from 06 - 11. Not 4 out of 5 counties, not 4 out of 5 Americans were affected.Heavily populated counties weight the statistics.On the Flip side, there were lots of localized weather disasters NOT federally declared and many disasters impact people in areas outside of the counties.

The ocean going freighters are not going to make it up the Mississippi River. New Orleans serves as a seaport and a river port. New Orleans is located in the only place it can serve as both. Should New Orleans not be in its present location, a port city would be built there regardless. Simple economics would dictate this to.

The ocean going freighters are not going to make it up the Mississippi River. New Orleans serves as a seaport and a river port. New Orleans is located in the only place it can serve as both. Should New Orleans not be in its present location, a port city would be built there regardless. Simple economics would dictate this to.

yes the port is not even where it floods (which is the city), my point exactly...the port can still be a port and an opporable river without that city

yes i know they get major storms up there but they dont get approaced often by cat 5 hurricanes, and they are protected by dikes that make ours look like retention pond dams! not even comparable!

Yes, that's my point - they've build massive dikes and solved their problem. The NOLA problem can be solved too. Which makes it all the more offensive to me that people are so willing - in some cases seemingly eager - to give up and quit.

yes the port is not even where it floods (which is the city), my point exactly...the port can still be a port and an opporable river without that city

Where do the people live that work these ports? Where do you put in the support industries and the retail stores that will be needed? Where do these support people live? The answer would be, New Orleans.

The ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans, which run north and south of the city, are as important today as at any point during the history of the republic. On its own merit, the Port of South Louisiana is the largest port in the United States by tonnage and the fifth-largest in the world. It exports more than 52 million tons a year, of which more than half are agricultural products -- corn, soybeans and so on. A larger proportion of U.S. agriculture flows out of the port. Almost as much cargo, nearly 57 million tons, comes in through the port -- including not only crude oil, but chemicals and fertilizers, coal, concrete and so on.

The problem is that there are no good shipping alternatives. River transport is cheap, and most of the commodities we are discussing have low value-to-weight ratios. The U.S. transport system was built on the assumption that these commodities would travel to and from New Orleans by barge, where they would be loaded on ships or offloaded. Apart from port capacity elsewhere in the United States, there aren't enough trucks or rail cars to handle the long-distance hauling of these enormous quantities -- assuming for the moment that the economics could be managed, which they can't be.

The focus in the media has been on the oil industry in Louisiana and Mississippi. This is not a trivial question, but in a certain sense, it is dwarfed by the shipping issue. First, Louisiana is the source of about 15 percent of U.S.-produced petroleum, much of it from the Gulf. The local refineries are critical to American infrastructure. Were all of these facilities to be lost, the effect on the price of oil worldwide would be extraordinarily painful. If the river itself became unnavigable or if the ports are no longer functioning, however, the impact to the wider economy would be significantly more severe. In a sense, there is more flexibility in oil than in the physical transport of these other commodities.

The oil fields, pipelines and ports required a skilled workforce in order to operate. That workforce requires homes. They require stores to buy food and other supplies. Hospitals and doctors. Schools for their children. In other words, in order to operate the facilities critical to the United States, you need a workforce to do it -- and that workforce is gone. Unlike in other disasters, that workforce cannot return to the region because they have no place to live. New Orleans is gone, and the metropolitan area surrounding New Orleans is either gone or so badly damaged that it will not be inhabitable for a long time.

A city is a complex and ongoing process - one that requires physical infrastructure to support the people who live in it and people to operate that physical infrastructure. We don't simply mean power plants or sewage treatment facilities, although they are critical. Someone has to be able to sell a bottle of milk or a new shirt. Someone has to be able to repair a car or do surgery. And the people who do those things, along with the infrastructure that supports them, are gone -- and they are not coming back anytime soon.

The displacement of population is the crisis that New Orleans faces. It is also a national crisis, because the largest port in the United States cannot function without a city around it. The physical and business processes of a port cannot occur in a ghost town, and right now, that is what New Orleans is. It is not about the facilities, and it is not about the oil. It is about the loss of a city's population and the paralysis of the largest port in the United States.

Katrina has taken out the port -- not by destroying the facilities, but by rendering the area uninhabited and potentially uninhabitable. That means that even if the Mississippi remains navigable, the absence of a port near the mouth of the river makes the Mississippi enormously less useful than it was. For these reasons, the United States has lost not only its biggest port complex, but also the utility of its river transport system -- the foundation of the entire American transport system. There are some substitutes, but none with sufficient capacity to solve the problem.

New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist. With that as a given, a city will return there because the alternatives are too devastating. The harvest is coming, and that means that the port will have to be opened soon. As in Iraq, premiums will be paid to people prepared to endure the hardships of working in New Orleans. But in the end, the city will return because it has to.

Yes, that's my point - they've build massive dikes and solved their problem. The NOLA problem can be solved too. Which makes it all the more offensive to me that people are so willing - in some cases seemingly eager - to give up and quit.

so thy should build 40 foot dikes a mile wide around new orleans..because thats what it would take to protect from a cat 5 there...theres not enough time to do that before another katrina happens it would be less cost to relocate and would create way more jobs for a far wider range of people!

Where do the people live that work these ports? Where do you put in the support industries and the retail stores that will be needed? Where do these support people live? The answer would be, New Orleans.

so thy should build 40 foot dikes a mile wide around new orleans..because thats what it would take to protect from a cat 5 there...theres not enough time to do that before another katrina happens it would be less cost to relocate and would create way more jobs for a far wider range of people!

Wildly overestimating the level of effort required to solve the problem is one way to win your argument, but not a particularly helpful one for anyone involved.

New Orleans has actually already completed several major levee enhancements and a huge seawall project that will go a long way towards reducing damage next time, no thanks to the many post-Katrina keyboard warriors who know what's best for everyone.

Quoting RTSplayer:The Big Bang theory is even based on a logical fallacy.

It assumes:

A) The laws are the same for all space and time.

B) Running a system backwards indefinitely produces states that were in the system's past.

then it looks at the hubble constant and says, "Gee, the universe is expanding, it must have been doing so forever. Let's run it backwards and see what happens."

PROBLEM.

That is an invalid experment, because you can't prove when and where the universe originate to prove when the "running backwards" should stop.

The infinitesmal point origin is a valid mathematical solution to a curve in a model, but the problem is the assumption that the curve can be or should be followed indefinitely is a fallacy.

If I start with a watch, and run it backwards, the assumption that the dates and times on the watch are valid states in the system's past is a fallacy. After all, we can run a watch backwards to infinity or until the device breaks, but it's meaningless. It was made a finite time, in most cases a few months or a few years ago.

The problem I am pointing out with the BB model is that running a system backwards indefinitely is not necessarily logically valid for finding previous states. The watch example shows how the "run it backwards" experiment can produce false states which never actually existed in the system's past.

Just one "tiny" problem.

Looking at red shift doesn't solve it, since the light could have been created that way in the first place.

But again, even if you ignore all the glaring problems in the BB model itself, it still doesn't solve the real question of origins. It doesn't.

If believing in God is irrational or non-scientific, since you can't see or test him in a lab, then how idiotic does this make Michio Kaku and other M-theory and string theorists? They literally believe in the spaghetti monster they cannot see, but disbelieve in God.

I had found another video the other day, in which the expert atheist narrator basically accidentally defeated his own argument against the existence of God.

It will take me a while to find it, but it went something like this.

He admitted the universe itself cannot be eternal, since entropy would have destroyed it.

Therefore the universe needs an origin and needs some form of eternal "cause that was not caused".

And that, friends, is the same thing as Aquinas' cosmological argument.

Yet in the very next statement the narrator dismisses God for no rational reason whatsoever, except that he just doesn't like the idea that God exists.

So the atheist said that there needed to be an "uncaused cause," exactly what any creationist would say, but he refuses to accept God as that solution.

the biblical God is, by defintion, the "uncaused cause", the "First and the Last".

So actually, the atheist narrator logically supported the existence of God, and then willfully rejected him.

No.

Do you you actually think you just disproved the big bang theory with god? Pathetic. Laughable at best.

P.S. why do you make a new paragraphs after every other sentence? It's improper, unnecessary and wastes space on the blog.

Quoting NaplesWebDesigner56:Rita, are you the blog's economic Guru? Are you just sitting back in your leather chair on your 9 acre estate on Galveston Inland, just watching the stocks, building your dividends, and collecting your millions. You are probably one of the most sophisticated bloggers here today. How wealthy are you?

First... I'm smart enough to not live on an island a few feet above sea level where hurricanes hit on average. 2nd... I'm smart enough not to own 9 acres because that would cost me more in property taxes and I hate paying taxes. 3rd....I have no interest in stocks because it is flawed....4th....I don't tell anybody my wealth......and Finally......I am here to see that the event takes place and it happens by the end of this year as we approach winter....

Wildly overestimating the level of effort required to solve the problem is one way to win your argument, but not a particularly helpful one for anyone involved.

New Orleans has actually already completed several major levee enhancements and a huge seawall project that will go a long way towards reducing damage next time, no thanks to the many post-Katrina keyboard warriors who know what's best for everyone.

LATEST SURFACE AND OBJECTIVE ANALYSES INDICATE A ZONE OF SLOW DESTABILIZATION EXTENDING FROM CENTRAL KS SWD ACROSS W CENTRAL AND CENTRAL OK INTO N TX...AHEAD OF COLD FRONT NOW CROSSING WRN KS AND THE OK/TX PANHANDLES. VISIBLE SATELLITE SHOWS WEAK CONVECTION EXPANDING ACROSS WRN KS/WRN OK INVOF THE SURFACE FRONT...BUT THIS CONVECTION IS OCCURRING WITHIN A MORE MIXED AIRMASS WHERE SURFACE FLOW HAS VEERED OVER THE PAST HOUR OR SO. WITH THE LEADING EDGE OF THE MORE DEEPLY MIXED BOUNDARY LAYER NOW APPROACHING CENTRAL OK/S CENTRAL KS...EXPECT STRONGEST STORMS TO EVENTUALLY EVOLVE AHEAD OF THE SURFACE FRONT -- NEARER TO THIS EVOLVING SURFACE TROUGH/DRYLINE.

DEWPOINTS REMAIN FAIRLY LOW AT THE SURFACE -- UPPER 40S OR LESS ACROSS THE ENTIRE REGION -- AND ARE EXPECTED TO REMAIN SO...OR EVEN DECREASE SLIGHTLY. THUS...EXPECTED MODEST AIRMASS DESTABILIZATION WILL BE THE RESULT OF WARM SECTOR HEATING WITHIN THE DRY SLOT...COMBINED WITH THE EWD SPREAD OF STEEP LAPSE RATES ALOFT AS VERY COLD /-20S C/ MID LEVEL AIR ACCOMPANIES THIS SYSTEM.

STRONG FLOW ALOFT AND FAVORABLE VEERING/SHEAR WITH HEIGHT WITHIN THE LOWER HALF OF THE TROPOSPHERE IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE OVERALL STRENGTH OF THE UPPER SYSTEM SUGGESTS THE EVENTUAL EVOLUTION OF SCATTERED/SMALL/LOW-TOPPED SUPERCELLS...DESPITE THE RELATIVELY LIMITED CAPE. GIVEN THE WARMING/MIXING BOUNDARY LAYER...TORNADO POTENTIAL SHOULD REMAIN LIMITED/ISOLATED. HOWEVER...HAIL IS EXPECTED ALONG WITH SOME THREAT FOR LOCAL WIND DAMAGE...WITH WIND THREAT BECOMING ENHANCED IF UPSCALE GROWTH INTO LINE SEGMENTS/BOWS CAN OCCUR. STORMS WILL LIKELY BE SLOW TO EVOLVE/INTENSIFY...AND THUS UNCERTAINTY REMAINS REGARDING TIMING OF POSSIBLE WW ISSUANCE.

Quoting NaplesWebDesigner56:What event? Please tell me you are not referring to the December end of the world date? LMAO. The blogger TemplesOfSyrinxC4 says that the Mayans were nothing more than a bunch of cannabalistic mongrels. This isn't true, is it?

Of course not, it's the fact everything in the universe such as our galaxy will align perfectly for the perfect storm of events...ever heard of Pandora's box

Not for nothing, this is probably why you hold such a crazy belief. Be willing to have your convictions tested and be willing to be admit to yourself - if no one else - when you're wrong. Of course NOLA is in a bad place. Of course it's going to be more expensive in the long run to protect and maintain. But seriously believing and advocating for the abandonment of an entire city because it's just too hard? Is that becoming the new American motto?

yesh i know the french quater and the nicer parts of town are above sea level, the parts that were flooded will continue to flood, by hurricanes or plain heavy rains every few decades, so just let it go and stop wasting money on a lost cause

First... I'm smart enough to not live on an island a few feet above sea level where hurricanes hit on average. 2nd... I'm smart enough not to own 9 acres because that would cost me more in property taxes and I hate paying taxes. 3rd....I have no interest in stocks because it is flawed....4th....I don't tell anybody my wealth......and Finally......I am here to see that the event takes place and it happens by the end of this year as we approach winter....

Not for nothing, this is probably why you hold such a crazy belief. Be willing to have your convictions tested and be willing to be admit to yourself - if no one else - when you're wrong. Of course NOLA is in a bad place. Of course it's going to be more expensive in the long run to protect and maintain. But seriously believing and advocating for the abandonment of an entire city because it's just too hard? Is that becoming the new American motto?

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard